The Interstellar Wars
The Interstellar Wars were a series of wars (the first being the "First" and the last currently being the "Fifth") fought primarily between the United Nations of Humanity (supported later by the Peregrine Transstellar Commonwealth, the Tso Imperium, the Malan Coalition and the Stytrian Environmental Republic - under the banner of the Spineward Treaty Organization) and the Khanate of Sancordia (supported later by the Herclux Combine, Stilor Empire and Hexenian Empire - under the banner of the Zephrain Pact). The Fifth Interstellar War was the largest war fought outside of the Sorensian Concordat in recorded history and ended in 2218, with the signing of the Treaty of Sirius. The First and Second Interstellar Wars The First and Second Interstellar Wars took place between the Peregrine Transtellar Commonwealth and the Khanate of Sancordia in the decades after the Eta Carinae Supernova enabled regular hyperspace travel again. The Sorensian Concordat barely acknowledged the existence of other interstellar states at this time period, and both sides stumbled into each other in what is now the Pact/STO neutral zone. The origins of the First war are nebulous but likely stemmed from conflict over resources or colonizable territory. Records are sketchy in places, but the war ended with a minor Khanate victory and a pullback of Peregrine exploration assets to Trailing for several decades. The Second War, which took place in the early 20th century, stemmed from increasing Khanate incursions across what was unofficially accepted as the border along the frontier. The Commonwealth had just begun constructing capital-mass warships at this time, which despite a lack of coherent operational doctrine they were able to use to good effect against lighter Khanate warships. The operation of these low-tech battleships encouraged the Khanate to develop bomber and gunboat assault tactics, which were employed to stop the Starshield before they were able to drive much beyond the original frontier. The war ended, technically, in a stalemate, but the Commonwealth was able to significantly expand their operations in neutral territory and the Khanate ceased organized raiding of Peregrine shipping. The Third Interstellar War The Third Interstellar War began between the Peregrine Transtellar Empire and the Khanate of Sancordia in late 2093 with a surprise Khanate assault on a Peregrine frontier naval base. The Khanate had learned of a new Peregrine ally/client species to rimward (the nascent United Nations) and had decided on forcing unsettled issues in the border regions in their favor before this new Peregrine ally managed to tip the balance of power permamently in the Commonwealth's favor. At this time, the Herclux were uninterested in extending the Pact past its original mandate of containing the Sorensians, so the Khanate acted on its own. This war saw the first human combat units engage in hostilities, primarily in support of Starshield naval assets. During this period, the largest human combat warships were the American Constellation class cruiser and Russian Federation Piotr Veliky, which would barely rate as a heavy cruiser in modern military terms. As a result, human warships, often operating in loose task groups with a Starshield flagship, were primarily used as convoy escorts and pickets in frontier systems. What did shine during this war were human ground forces and fighter pilots, which utilized technology much closer to galactic norms at the time. Compared to the bulky Peregrine, humans made excellent fighter pilots and marines, and were used to good effect by the Starshield in protecting their capital ships and retaking outposts. The Sancordians learned quickly to respect human capabilities in hand-to-hand combat, power armor rendering the natural Sancordian advantages less effective. United States Marines and PRC Space Forces were especially notable for their achievements in defending Peregrine outposts. The war ended in 2097 with a ceasefire that saw a return to the status quo. Perhaps the most significant long-term effect, however, was the confidence gained by the human nation-states in interstellar military affairs and the mutual agreement that Earth needed a strong, unified planetary defense grid free from national rivalries. While the nations of Earth and her colonies would retain their individual navies, the network that would become known as the Alstead Grid would be established to protect the Earth-Luna system, on the assumption that in any future conflict the human homeworld would become a target. The Fourth Interstellar War The seeds for the Fourth War were set almost immediately after the end of the Third. The Herclx became more interested in preserving Pact supremacy in the disputed territory between the PTC and Khanate, and the Sancordians were eager to remove their ancient enemy from power in the Spinward half of Civilized space. This was the period of peak Peregrine power in the Reconnect Era, and it did not sit well on Sancordia. Pact naval planners knew that given time, the humans would be able to muster a formidable force to stand alongside the Commonwealth, they planned originally on a resumption of hosilities within twenty years. The best laid plans of mice and men, however, do not always stand up to Murphy. Events in Sorensian space-what would eventually result in the FIfteenth Coreward Expedition and its destruction by the Chelonian/Bastet Alliance-would occupy the Pact's attention for several decades, Herclux warships reinforcing the Sancordian frontier in case the Sorensian viziers to rimward decided they needed to flex their muscles. This extra time afforded to humanity gave several of the nation-states the time to build and deploy capital ships, as well as develop significant colonies away from Earth. This depth would enable the humans to recover from losses, whereas before the Sol system was functionally the only major world humanity possessed. Underestimating human naval strength, the Pact decided on trying to land a knockout blow against the Starshield first, launching a three-pronged assault into Commonwealth territory. The Peregrines expected the attack, however they were caught unexpected by the split of the Pact fleet. Two Pact attacks utterly annihilated major Peregrine bases and their understrength defending elements while the third ran into the brick wall that was 80% of the Starshield's Wall of Battle. In the stalemate that followed, the United Nations managed to coordinate several multi-national squadrons in hit-and-run operations across the Pact logistical train. Human warships were still nowhere near as powerful as their Pact counterparts, but human warships-especially the excellent Russian and Japanese fast missile cruiser designs-were very effective in destroying Pact resupply convoys. Confronted with this new threat, the Pact redeployed a fleet built around several capital ships and forced the outmatched human fleet to do battle by assaulting the major colony world of Clarke. While the world only supported some twenty million at that point, it was for humanity a major holding and had significant assets protecting it. The American, British, and Indian Union task forces over the planet barely slowed the Pact down. The Starshield was able to muster itself and defeat the Combine-Khanate forces in several large engagements over the course of the first year of the conflict. Because of the losses, the Pact abandoned its strategy and fought a fighting withdrawal into Terran space, hoping to link up with Sancordian elements occupying Clarke. Within a year, the full might of the Pact, as well as the Starshield and UN Navy were operating several missions per week within the UN. Reinforcements continued to flow in from the Commonwealth, and new ships arrived daily from the Pact. The Commonwealth and UN, determined to stem the tide, attacked supply lines, which were weakened by the lack of vessels available to support the logistical effort by the Pact. The UN was unable to evict the Pact, mostly Sancordian forces, from Clarke, and the Starshield was tied down facing the main Pact fleet. Seeking to break the stalemate, the Sancordians bypassed human pickets around Eta Cassiopiae, the next major system in the direction of the Khanate, and assaulted the major human colony at Terra Nova, in the Tau Ceti system. Tau Ceti was home to the first human colony and already had a population in the hundreds of millions. Ground defenses gave a good showing of themselves, but the nascent Terra Novan Defense Corps was brushed aside by the five battleships the Khanate committed to the operation. The survivors fled to Earth bringing dire news. While the Pact landed some ground troops on Terra Nova, primarily to secure planetary defense grids, the plan all along was to merely use Tau Ceti as a staging point for an assault on Sol. Only ten light years from the human homeworld, Tau Ceti was soon home to a reinforced Sancordian fleet supported by a Herclux battlegroup. Within a month a force sufficent to take and hold the human homeworld was gathered, or so the Pact's strategy board reasoned. The ultimate battle of the Fourth Interstellar War began on April 17th, 2167 with the Pact armada dropping out of hyperspace just beyond Jupiter's orbit. A quirk of orbital mechanics meant Mars was the logical rallying point of the various human squadrons in the system, which rallied at Phobos. Appointing Indian Union Admiral Arash Chopra Supreme Commander of the allied fleet, the outmatched human fleet planned to bloody the Pact forces as much as possible before they inevitably engaged the Alstead Grid. What the Pact didn't count on was a hastily-reorganized Starshield battlegroup, originally dispatched for Sol to assist the humans in retaking Terra Nova. Transiting the Sirius Wormhole and jumping for Earth, they emerged in the Sol system just as the human fleet and the Martian planetary defense grid intercepted the Pact fleet. Trapped agains the Red Planet's gravity well, the Pact was forced to engage the Allied fleet. The Sancordians made the decision to land ground troops on Mars to silence the impressive Martian planetary defenses, putting troops on the ground at Elysium Mons, the newly-formed Hellas Sea, and south of the Tharsis Bulge. What they didn't anticipate was the UN promptly nuking the landings at Elysium and Tharsis, trusting the ground troops dug in around the Hellas Sea settlements to hold the line. Ironically large fusion devices helped melt the Martian permafrost and were actually an aid in improving the climate of the Red Planet, but that's another wiki entry. The Pact had another card up their sleeve, however, and Allied captains could only stare at their sensor screens as a reserve battlegroup, the original force that seized Tau Ceti, dropped out of hyperspace over Earth itself. They would have to trust the Alstead Grid to defend Earth without the help of the fleet, which was slowly grinding the Pact down. A handful of damaged warships sallied to the defense of Earth, including the newly completed USS Texas. The fourth battleship commissioned by the United States, the alert over Mars spurred the crew working the battleship up to quickly prepare the ship for combat. Lying in wait in the shadow of Luna, Commodore Gerhart James held his fire when the Sancordian ships cleared the Lunar perimeter. He waited until the the Sancordian ships were locked in a close engagement with the defense grid before easing the Texas out of the moon's shadow, a handful of damaged destroyers serving as the new battleship's only screen, and burned hard for the defense perimeter. The Texas was in range before the Sancordians even knew she was there, and heavy railgun and missile fire pounded the already engaged capital ships. Texas ''claimed four capital ship kills in that engagement, and as it became clear their gambit had failed, the Pact began to retreat back to Terra Nova. The Starshield fleet, supplemented by the ''Texas and a handful of other undamaged human warships, followed them back to Terra Nova and forcefully evicted them from the system. The pendulum had firmly shifted the other way, and in three major battles over the space of two months, the Allies forced the Pact to withdraw from human space and back across the neutral zone. The Fourth Interstellar War ended on October 3rd, 2167, and while no territory had changed hands most observers had to concede the Human-Peregrine alliance had emerged victorious. The Fourth War spurred the unification of the national human navies and would set the stage for the ascension of humanity as Civilized Space's newest major power. The Fifth Interstellar War Fourty years later, the largest war fought outside of the former Sorensian Concordat began on the relatively unimportant world of Gathar, when the Stilor, under the guise of support of a rival government, invaded the planet. The invasion triggered a war that cost millions of lives, saw some of the largest fleet engagements in stellar history, and dragged on for almost six years. For a complete detailed summary of the Fifth Interstellar War, please see the wiki entry regarding it.